The present invention relates generally to a prepaid telecommunication services credit, and more particularly to a universal prepaid telecommunication services credit that can be used for wireless, Internet, local telephone and long distance services for a plurality of service providers. The present invention also relates to systems and methods for implementing and fulfilling the prepaid telecommunication services credit.
Prepaid telecommunication services are becoming popular among many people, including immigrants, the credit challenged, teens, seniors, etc. Prepaid services for telecommunication products, such as wireless (cellular, PCS, GSM, etc.), Internet, and traditional telephone services, such as local and long distance telephone services are being offered by many service providers, and typically are provided by issuing prepaid calling or telecommunication cards to customers.
With prepaid telecommunication services currently known in the art, a customer typically purchases a prepaid calling card for the service, and when activated, the service provider credits the customer's account with the amount of the prepaid card. However, because there are a number of service providers, and each of those providers may be offering different services and amounts for each of those services, there are a large number of prepaid cards on the market. For example, companies like Qwest™, AT&T™, Sprint™, Verizon™, and others all may offer wireless, Internet and traditional telephone prepaid services, and each service may be offered with different prepaid amounts ($10, $20, $50, $100, etc.). With such large and diverse product offerings, service providers face difficult production and distribution problems. Moreover, retailers are concerned about carrying products, stock keeping units (“SKU”) or uniform product codes (“UPC”) for each service provider's different product offerings. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, if a retailer carried all the different product offerings, the prepaid cards probably would overtake a significant portion of the retailer's shelf space. Accordingly, retailers are hesitant to carry all the different product offerings from the different service providers, so the service providers are finding it difficult to get significant market penetration with their products.
Thus, what is needed is prepaid telecommunication services credit system and method that allows a single prepaid credit issuer to provide prepaid telecommunication services for multiple service providers, including a method and system for automatically fulfilling a customer account with a specified service provider.